THE YARN IN THE COMFORTER

It was Sunday afternoon and Daddy was resting on the bed in the kitchen bedroom. Jenny climbed up beside him on the soft yarn-tied comforter and began pulling out the bits of brightly colored yarn one by one.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” warned Daddy.

“Why?”

“Well, when I was a little boy, one time my Mother was gone and I pulled out the yarn from all the comforters on all the beds in the house.”

“Where was she?”

“Oh, she’d gone to club, and when she got home and saw what I’d done, I got a good paddling.”

Later in the day Jenny said to Mother, “I didn’t know Grandma ever belonged to club.”

“She didn’t. Grandma never belonged to any club in her life. She had ten children and a lazy husband and there was never any time or money for anything like clubs. What ever made you think she did?”

“Daddy said he pulled the yarn out of all the comforters when he was a little boy and his Mother was at club.“

Mother laughed and said, “Well, I guess Daddy always has been a good one with the yarns.”

WHEN THE SAINTS COME MARCHIN’ IN

Jenny knew that her Mother’s parents were dead. They had been dead before Margaret was born. Every year, for as long as Jenny could remember, Mother had cut some yellow roses to put on their graves at Decoration Day. She had heard that someday there was to be a day of judgment when all the people who had ever lived would suddenly rise up out of their graves and come to life again.

Mother often mentioned her parents when telling of the things that had happened when
she was little. Jenny wished she could have known them. She wondered if they would have liked her.

“Say, Mother,” Jenny said one morning.

“What do you want, Honey?”

“S’pose all of a sudden all of my grandparents and great grandparents and people of all ages way back to the beginning would become alive and start walking down the road past the house. Would they make a line clear up to the corner?”

“Oh, further than that. It would be a lot of people, you know.”

Jenny could picture them, a great line of men, women, and children walking single file down the road. Most of the men and women would be tall and skinny. They would be dressed in old fashioned clothing. It would be even more exciting than having the men in a coyote hunt walk past. She would stand at the mailbox and wave hello to each person as they passed by. Maybe she would tell them who she was. Maybe there would be someone in the line who looked just like her. There ought to be, out of this many relatives. People were always saying she looked like somebody on one side of the family or the other. Maybe it would take all morning for the people to pass by. Maybe all day, or maybe several days and several nights.

Jenny thought about the man and woman at the end of the line. Even they would be her great great great great great ... how many greats she couldn’t imagine. What would they look like? What would their names be? Why, Adam and Eve, of course.

Sometimes Jenny was overwhelmed by her own thoughts.

WHEN THE ROOF LEAKED

It started to rain hard that afternoon. Soon there were little puddles standing all around in the yard. More rain fell into the puddles. Jenny thought the bigger rain drops looked like duck’s feet as they splashed into the puddles. Sometimes they looked like corn flakes.

Drip drip plip plop. The roof was leaking onto the floor by the stove. Mother set the dishpan under the leaking place. Now it went, ”Plink plink plank. Drip drop plip plop. Mother got another pan. Now there were two plink plink planks. Drip drip plop plink plink plank. The drips and planks made music in the kitchen. Mother got more pans, kettles and buckets until the kitchen floor was nearly covered with things to hold the water that leaked through the kitchen roof. There had been a bad hail storm about a week ago.

“I told you you should have fixed that roof last week,” Mother said to Daddy. “Now it’s leaking like a sieve.”

They moved the kitchen furniture into the into the adjoining bedroom and the dining room. Mother put on an old raincoat and boots as she moved from pantry to kitchen to bedroom. Jenny and Margaret were milling around in the dining room and the kitchen. Daddy made coffee on the dining room heating stove. Mother put plates and cups and silverware and a bowl of cold baked beans and a big plate of bologna sandwiches on the table. It was crowded, but they still managed to squeeze around the table in the bedroom for supper. As Jenny sat in her high chair eating her bologna sandwich, she thought the meal tasted extra good tonight.

Jenny could hear the frogs singing in the draw. They always sang after a big rain. Sometimes they sounded like lots of water rushing. There was lots of water in the kitchen.

“It sure is nice,” Jenny thought happily to herself, “when the roof leaks and you have to eat in the bedroom.”

WHEN MOTHER WAS SICK

Mother had just finished the breakfast dishes that summer morning. She threw the dishwater out the east door and hung up the dishpan. Then she made her way into the bedroom off the kitchen and lay down on the bed.

“Mother! Are you sick? What’s the matter?” Mother never laid down at this time of the morning and seldom in the afternoon unless it was on a Sunday.

“I can’t go on any longer,” answered Mother. “I’ll just have to lay down for a little while. I must have caught this summer complaint that’s been going around.”

Jenny went into the bedroom and looked at Mother. She started to climb on the bed beside her.

“You run along and play, honey. I don’t feel very good.”

“Are you goin’ to git up pretty soon?”

“Maybe. Now be a good girl.”

Jenny went back out to the kitchen. Margaret was bouncing a rubber ball outside. The kitchen seemed empty and quiet. There was no clatter of cooking, no smell of bread, cake or pie baking. The floor needed sweeping. Jenny could hear the flies buzzing and the clock ticking. A hen was singing a contented hen song from somewhere in the yard. The yellow morning sun shone through the cracked places in the dark green window shade on the east window, making a pattern of branches on the floor and part of the wall.

“Jenny went to the bedroom and said, “I’m goin’ outside.”

“All right. Why don’t you see what Margaret is doing?”

Jenny went out the screen door, which was black with flies, letting it bang behind her and disrupting the flies so that they flew up in a cloud. Margaret was still bouncing the ball up and down.

“Do you want to play with me? I’ll let you chase the ball when I miss it.”

“Okay.”

Margaret was being nice to Jenny today. They didn’t even quarrel. It was fun, for a while,
to chase the elusive ball, but the sun was hot, and they tired of the game, and went back inside the house. Mother was throwing up into the wash pan. The throw-up had a bad sour smell. She had gotten the chamber pot from the closet, because she had diarrhea too, and knew she wouldn’t be able to make it to the outdoor toilet in time. An awful smell came from the chamber pot. too.

“Poor Mother,” sympathized Margaret.

“Poor Mother,” murmured Jenny.

Mother went back to bed. Near the east door sat a bushel basket of blue plums, ripening in the sun, waiting to be canned or made into preserves.

“Can I have a plum?” Jenny asked.

“Go ahead.”

Jenny put a whole plum into her mouth, making her cheek bulge. She punctured it with her teeth and the sweet juice oozed out. Next she chewed on the plum; the skin was more sour than the rest, but it was good too. She threw the seed out the door, disturbing more flies from the black curtain of flies on the screen. Some came into the house. She ate several more plums, throwing the seeds into the cob basket.

A car came down the road, leaving a cloud of dust behind. It was Ernie, the rural mail carrier.

“I’m going to meet the mail carrier,” Margaret announced importantly.

Jenny ate another plum. Margaret returned shortly.

“What was the mail?” Mother called from the bedroom.

“Just the Daily. I talked to Ernie.”

“What did he have to say?”

“I told him you were sick with flu and he said that was too bad and that lots of people in town were having the flu too.”

Margaret spread the newspaper on the dining room rug and began reading the funnies to herself. Jenny ate another plum. The morning dragged on. Finally Daddy came in from the field. Jenny and Margaret were both glad to see him.

“Read me the funnies, Daddy,” Jenny begged, tugging at his hand.

Daddy immediately inquired, “Where’s Mother?”

“She’s sick,” Margaret explained. Got the flu.”

Daddy went into the bedroom.

“Feeling pretty tough, are you Mother?” he asked softly.

“I felt faint and had to go to bed. I’ve been vomiting and running off the bowels all morning. I must have caught the summer complaint at the picnic last week.”

“You stay right there. I’ll take care of everything. What do you want me to fix for dinner?”

“Oh, just fry some eggs and open up a can of corn.”

Jenny followed Daddy around the room as he started a fire in the kitchen range and began preparing the noon meal. Margaret brought in a basket of cobs and set the table. Daddy cursed under his breath as he dropped some eggshell into the eggs in the skillet. He opened a can of corn and put it into a pan on the stove, but burned it a little. He made coffee for himself. Margaret set the table and got out the loaf of home made bread and some butter.

“Isn’t Mother goin’ to eat ?” Jenny asked, as just the three of them sat at the table, but nobody answered. Daddy cut up Jenny’s egg, but it was all crisp around the outside and scratchy to her throat when she tried to swallow it. She put her fork down. He put some corn onto her plate, but part of it was brown and burned and she couldn’t eat it either.

“Eat your bread and butter, Sis,” Daddy coaxed.

Jenny glanced at the thick uneven slab of bread.

“Mother doesn’t cut it that way,” she whined, and refused to touch it.

Daddy leaned back in his chair and read the newspaper and then said he had to go back to the field. He told Margaret that she should go ahead and wash the dishes. He went out to the tractor shed to get gasoline for his tractor and then climbed onto the tractor seat. The tractor made its pop pop sound as he drove it out of the driveway and on up the road.

Jenny picked up a plum and went outside to the brick walk where the yellow cat was sitting in the sun. She squatted down beside the cat.

“Are you hungry?” she asked it.

The cat said,”Yow.,” as if in reply. When it “yowed,” Jenny looked closely at the inside of its mouth. Mother had said that all cats have worms under their tongues, but Jenny could never see any. When she finished her plum, she placed the seed beside the cat’s soft paw. It sniffed at the seed and looked up inquiringly at Jenny for something more palatable. It missed the usual offering of table scraps. Sometimes Mother made milk gravy for the cats and dogs when there weren’t enough table scraps.

Margaret washed the dishes and told Jenny to dry them and whispered to her that if she didn’t, she’d wash her face with the dish rag. Jenny dried them as best she knew how. They felt greasy and smelled funny. She put the knives and forks away, but couldn’t reach the cupboard to put the dishes away, so Margaret did this.

“That’s a good helper,” Mother told Margaret.

“I helped too,” Jenny said. She ran her hand along the top of the oilcloth on the kitchen table. It felt greasy. Her face and hands felt greasy and sticky . The beds weren’t made and the house had a topsy turvy look. She ate two more plums. They didn’t taste as good as they had in the morning. The plums didn’t quite reach the top of the basket now.

Jenny went into the dining room and lay down on the rug, soon falling asleep. When she awoke, her tummy ached. She went to the bed where Mother was and started crying a little.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

“My tummy hurts.”

Mother took one look at her and hurried to get the wash pan. She lifted Jenny to the bed and put the wash pan on a chair beside the bed. Then she put her hand on Jenny’s forehead. Jenny’s stomach gave a few painful jerks and out of her mouth and nose and into the wash pan came plum skins, plum pulp and plum juice. Her eyes watered and she cried some more. The wash pan kept filling up with plums, plums and more plums. They tasted terrible and her stomach kept jerking.

“My, but you ate a lot of plums!” said Mother in surprise. “Poor little dumpling. Looks like you caught the summer complaint too.”

WEED SEEDS

Jenny was strolling around in the yard north of the house one morning. in April. She walked among the sour dock which grew as high as her head It was like being in a forest. As she pulled off a long green leaf, she noticed the clusters of seeds on the sour dock. They were starting to turn brown. She decided to pick some for her playhouse. She could play that the seeds were cereal.

Jenny went to the empty cans Mother had thrown away behind the chicken house. She selected a large Hershey’s cocoa can and decided it would do. She took the can and went back to the weed forest and began sliding off handfuls of seeds into the cocoa can. She made plans to feed the seeds to her “children,” two old dolls that had been relegated to the playhouse.

“Now eat your cereal,” she would say, “or Mama will have to spank.” Jenny had never been spanked for not eating food, but she knew of children who had. It would turn out that the “children” wouldn’t want their cereal. She would turn each one across her knee and spank them. How the children would cry. Then she would say sternly, “Hush now, or Mama will give you something more to bawl about.” When the cocoa can was heaped full, she took it to her outdoor playhouse in an abandoned hog house and set it in her orange crate cupboard.

She felt thirsty and tired, so she went to the house and dipped a dipper full of water from the water pail, taking deep gulps of water and letting the dipper drip on the kitchen floor. Mother had made chocolate pie for dinner and had saved the pan for Jenny to scrape out with a spoon. It always tasted much better this way than it ever did in the pie. She sometimes wondered who scraped out the cake and pie bowls and pans in homes where there were no children.

Soon after dinner that noon, Jenny’s hands and fingers felt hot and itchy. She saw that they were covered with little red pimples.

“Look here, “ she said to Daddy, and spread her hands out before him. Daddy called Mother’s attention to the spots. They wanted to know where she had been playing that morning.

“I slid brown seeds from those tall weeds north of the house into a cocoa can ,” she told them

“You didn’t eat any, did you?”

“No, of course not. They were pretend food for my old dolls in the playhouse.”
They told her this was sour dock and that she should stay out of it. Then Mother made a smooth white paste from baking soda and water and put it on Jenny’s hands and fingers . It felt cool and soothing and made the itching stop for a while. Whenever it began to itch again, Mother would put on more paste. By evening, the spots were gone.

Jenny thought about the cocoa can with the weed seeds in it. Tomorrow she was going to dump them in the ditch. They wouldn’t have been good for her “children” anyhow.

WEDNESDAY’S CHILD

      
        Wednesday’s child is full of woe.

Hank grew to be a tall, lean, straight backed, handsome man with coal black hair and a pleasant respectful attitude toward those he trusted. He would do anything for a friend, but in his mind, most of the world was against him and he was quick to take offense. As the years went by, he appeared destined for bachelorhood, but when he was in his late thirties, he was charmed by the spontaneity, the good nature, happy laughter and flirtatiousness of seventeen year old Beulah, who had moved from Arkansas to the small town in Kansas, with her family, where they ran the town’s only hotel. Hank and Beulah were soon married, and the two of them and his beloved mother, who had no one else in the world, moved to the tiny house on the farm located on fertile creek bottom land across the road from the farm where Jenny’s family was to live. Hank was as lean as Beulah was fat. They were like Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat, or perhaps a nail and a pumpkin. When Hank sat there so straight and lean in his cast iron tractor seat, with his flat cap on his head, from a distance, he looked just like a nail. Though both Hank and Beulah worked hard, and the land was good, poor business decisions were made and they struggled to eke out a living when the dry years of the thirties came along. It almost seemed as if he willed himself to fail, thinking it his lot in life. He had never experienced much success and seemed unable to pull himself up and overcome adversity as so many do.

UNJUSTLY PUNISHED

Jenny enjoyed hearing Mother and Daddy tell about things that happened during their childhood. Some of this was way back in the late 1800’s, and when Jenny compared it to the arid, dusty, grayer, browner world of the 1930’s, she thought that their lives must have been far different from hers. Crops and gardens grew in abundance, colors were brighter, the earth was rich and fertile, and every day must have been exciting. Children were polite and obeyed their parents, people dressed in wonderful clothing, there were many brothers and sisters, and a child never felt lonely. Some things were worse though, and the bad things along with the good things, gave an interesting texture to the stories her parents now told.

“Tell about the time you got a spanking because of the fan,” Jenny would beg her Mother, following her around the kitchen while she cooked dinner, or cleaned the house, or tended the fire.

“When I was 5 years old I had a beautiful fan. It was the only pretty thing I had that was all mine. It unfolded to show a picture of a pretty little girl with bright flowers all around her. When I fanned with it , I felt a pleasant cool breeze on my face. My oldest sister, Ada, who was 6 years older than I was, had a friend named Caroline over to visit one hot summer day. I was unfolding and admiring the fan, and Caroline grabbed it and said that now it was her fan and she was going to take it home with her. I said she couldn’t have my fan and started to cry and chased her around the room trying to get the fan back. When my Mother heard the fuss I was making, she said I shouldn’t be noisy and rude to guests, and she turned me over her knee and gave me a hard spanking. Some of the other children snickered behind their hands and I went into a dark corner and sobbed for a long time. “

“Did Caroline take the fan home with her?”

“No, she didn’t , but after that, I couldn’t look at my fan without thinking about the spanking and feeling that I was a bad child.”

“But that wasn’t fair. I wish she would have spanked that mean old Caroline.”

“No, it wasn’t fair, but my Mother was so busy she didn’t think she had time to ask any questions.”

“Didn’t she care about how you felt?”

“She cared a lot more about what other people might say about how she was raising her children.”


“Are you still mad at her?”

“No. She did so many other good things that I forgave her, but I will never forget that unfair spanking.”
Jenny was glad Mother wasn’t like this. Once, when Jenny was four, Mother was reading the newspaper, and everything was so quiet that Jenny went over to her Mother and screamed in her ear. Mother gave her a stinging slap on the face and said, “Don’t you ever scream in anyone’s ear. It might break their ear drum or cause them to go deaf.” A few tears came into Jenny’s eyes. Although she hadn’t meant to do any harm, she now felt very foolish and knew she deserved this slap. It took her by complete surprise and was the only time Mother had ever punished her.

Dad too, remembered something worse than this from his boyhood. His parents had a large family of 4 girls and 6 boys. They lived in poverty on a neglected farm. As soon as the boys were old enough to do farm work, his father put them to work in the barn and in the fields and he dressed in his good suit and retired to the living room where he sat around and read all day. That was what boys were for. You put them to work so you could live a life of ease. Jenny’s Dad was the second oldest son, and by the time he was 14, he had learned the rudiments of farm work and handling the farm animals.
Most of Dad’s narratives were told over the dinner and supper tables.

“Tell us about that beating your father gave you,” Jenny and Margaret would say. This was one of their favorites.

“When I was about 14,” Dad began, “I was plowing in the north forty. It was a fine summer morning, and I thought if I plowed 2 more rounds, I could get finished by dinner. I was hungry and my stomach was growling, but it was cloudy and I couldn’t see the sun, so it seemed earlier to me than it was. I thought I had plenty of time and that my father would be so surprised and proud of me because I had gotten it done so fast. When I brought the horses in to the tank by the barn, my father was there waiting for me.

’Young man,’ he said, ‘You're an hour late. Just what have you been doing?’

‘I’ve just been workin’ my butt off, that’s what, while you’ve been sittin’ around on yours.' Then my father said, ‘Don’t you be insolent with me. I’ll teach you a lesson.‘

He was getting madder all the time and then he picked up a stick from the ground and beat me unmercifully across the back and shoulders.’

‘You can just go without your dinner, too.’"

Jenny’s Dad never forgot nor forgave his unjust punishment. Though he was always dutiful toward his father, after this he could feel neither respect nor affection for him.

Jenny felt certain that Dad would never punish her unfairly. She had only gotten one paddling from him. When she was five, one long winter evening she sassed him on purpose just to see if he really would paddle her as he had Margaret the times she sassed him back. He turned her across his knee and paddled her with the back of the hairbrush, but not very hard. Jenny knew she had that coming to her.

UNDER THE APRICOT TREE

Uncle Len’s empty left sleeve was always tucked into his overall pocket. Once in a while, to tease the children, he would pull out the sleeve that was empty up to the shoulder and ask them if they could do that.

Jenny liked Uncle Len. He looked something like Daddy, only he talked slower. He always had a twinkle in his eyes. He never complained of the loss of his arm. Folks that knew him hardly thought of it any more. It had happened about ten years ago. During an exchange of labor, his hand and sleeve had been caught in a moving chain on a piece of machinery and his entire arm was torn off at the shoulder before they could stop the machine or realized what had happened.

“Mother, what did they do with Uncle Len’s arm?” Jenny suddenly asked. He had been there that morning. It was a delicate subject, but Mother decided she’d better answer.

“They put it in a metal box and buried it under the apricot tree south of the potato patch.”

“Why did they do that?”

“Well, they had to do something with it. They didn’t want to just leave it lying around for the chickens to peck at. A person’s arm is an important part of him. It seemed like the only decent thing to do. They buried it on our place because we own the land and will be here for a long time.”

Jenny went out to the apricot tree. She thought of the arm in its box and wondered how it must have looked. Had it been all bloody? Had they buried it in a sleeve, or bare? Was the hand open or closed.? Maybe someone said a prayer over the arm. When Uncle Len went to Heaven, would he get his arm back? There was a low spot under the apricot tree where someone might have dug a hole one time. Who would have dug the hole? Daddy? One of her Uncles? One of the neighbors? Jenny looked at the dying tree. She remembered that long ago they had eaten apricots from it. Now the drought had made all but one of the branches die. They were gray and bare. Golden sap had oozed and hardened in a low fork. She pulled off some little beads of it. Crack! She snapped off a dead branch and wondered why things had to die.

TREES

            I think that I shall never see
            A poem lovely as a tree
            A tree that looks at God all day
            And lifts her leafy arms to pray
                  From “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer

During the dry years, many of the trees had died. Even the mulberry, so well adapted to Kansas weather, had suffered a loss of nearly half of its row of trees as the water table dropped. The dead trees stood skeletal and gray. Most of the trees which had once shaded the house were gone. The three big cedar trees west of the house were too far away to be of much help. The box elders and the cottonwoods in the draw had survived, but the pasture hedge of thorny osage oranges suffered heavy damage too. Mother deplored the loss of the trees, as she remembered the tree shaded house and yard of her childhood home.

Jenny loved all trees, They made cool shade, their leaves rustled in the wind, they brought the birds they kept the ground underneath from washing away, and some were nice to climb. When she saw the tiny trees across the road from the plum thicket, beneath the box elder, the one Daddy used for making whistles, she decided she would dig up some and plant them in the yard. She took the heavy spade and a cardboard box and dug as many as she could carry. It was hard work, but she felt happy. She planted them shallowly on the hard dry ground northeast of the house and could imagine a lovely grove there.

As soon as Daddy got off the tractor to come in for dinner, she went over to him and said, “Come see my little trees. When these grow tall, we will have cool shade”, but alas the trees were limp and wilted in the hot sun and the chickens had scratched up most of them.

Daddy said, “Why that’s poison ivy. We’d better get rid of it.” He put on his work gloves and took them away. Luckily, Jenny didn’t get poison ivy, but she felt crushed all that day at the failed plan.

TOWN

Jenny pressed her nose flat against the car window and looked down at the road. The road was a swift stream running under them and the car was standing still.

“Hey, Margaret! When you do this it looks like the road’s moving. You try it.”

“That's nothing,” was Margaret’s response. I’ve seen that lots of times.”

Jenny said,”Oh,” and quit looking because it wasn’t any fun now.

They drove up and down hills, past farm houses and over small bridges, until at last they were in town. Mother turned around to arrange Jenny’s fuzzy green tam because it had slid off her silky fine hair and was way down over one ear. Margaret’s tam was red. They had gotten them last year at Aunt Olivia’s hat shop because they matched their coats.

Daddy parked the car in front of the produce station and carried in the eggs and cream, stopping to chat with some people inside. Mother, Margaret and Jenny got out of the car and walked on up the main street sidewalk, past stores with awnings, past the corner drinking fountain and other wonders. Mother took a tight hold of Jenny’s hand whenever they crossed the street. They saw Aunt Pearl, so Mother stopped to talk with her. Margaret went on by herself, as she was old enough to do this. It seemed to Jenny that Margaret always got to do such exciting things. She thought that Mother would never be finished talking to Aunt Pearl. All she could gather from their conversation were bits of, “I said ----------” and “So she said ---------,” and so forth. She tugged at Mother’s hand and whined, “Let’s go,” but Mother paid no attention.

As they stood there, Jenny watched the parade of people pass by: little girls and big girls, girls with pig tails, girls with straight hair like her own and some with curly hair, rowdy or shy little boys, skinny people, fat people, people with frowns on their faces and people with smiles, women with funny hats, women carrying babies, men dressed in their Sunday best and men in overalls and unionalls. A very fat man walked by with a short curved pipe in his mouth . He had a very big mole growing under one eye. Jenny watched them all, all these aliens.

Mother met other people she knew and they would ask, “How are you Jenny?” and she would say with exaggerated exuberance, “Just fine,” the way Daddy had taught her long ago when she was two. Some of them would say, “My, you’re growing,” and some would ask how old she was. Whenever Mother stopped too long, Jenny would tug at her hand again and whine, “Let’s go,” but it never did any good.

Mother bought a spool of thread at the department store, the one where they sent the change down from the balcony on a wire in little buckets. Jenny looked up and saw a slanting window in the store’s ceiling. She had to look several times to be sure it really was a window. The counters were so high that she couldn’t see what was on them. Mother lifted her up so that she could see some of the things. On the way out of the store, Jenny stopped suddenly and stared at the store’s window display. There were several long necked heads on stands. and the clerk they had seen in the store was putting a different hat on one of them. Jenny clutched Mother’s hand tightly.

“Those aren’t real people,” Mother explained. They are just dummies or mannequins,” but Jenny still thought they might be the heads of dead people. One of the ladies at Mother’s club looked just like one of them. Just then the six o'clock whistle blew with a penetrating eerie sound. Jenny had the idea there might be some connection between the whistle blowing and the window dummies. It was all so strange and a little frightening,

Next they went to the grocery store. The clerk that waited on them wore a bright flowered smock. She had a loud shrill voice and her hands and fingers were long with big blue veins, but she spoke kindly to Jenny. Daddy and Margaret came in and Daddy carried out the groceries.

“How much did the produce bring this week?” Mother asked him.

“Six dollars and a few cents.”

“Isn’t that the limit! We practically have to give it away, when you think of the amount we pay for feed.”

They started home in the car. Daddy had bought a big mixed bag of lemon drops and chocolate stars from the candy cases at the Variety store for a dime. Mother said he just should have bought a nickel’s worth. She said they could all have some after they got home and changed into their everyday clothes.

Margaret stood on her knees and looked through the back car window toward town.

“Look at that big black thing,” she said pointing to the standpipe. Jenny looked too. It stood straight up in the air, higher than anything else in town. Mother said that they blew the six o’clock whistle from the standpipe. Jenny thought it must take a very big thing to make such a big noise. She thought again of the long necked dummies in the store window.

Margaret turned around again and said, “I still see the big black thing.” They made a game out of it, taking turns looking every so often and saying, “I still see the big black thing.” They drove and drove and they could still see he big black thing, though it seemed to be getting smaller.

When they came to top of the hill that went down to their house, and could see the tops of the tall cottonwood trees, they looked back and could still see the big black thing looming up on the horizon like a thin black needle. As they drove down the hill, it disappeared. Jenny decided that maybe town wasn’t as far away as she had thought, if you could see the big black thing and the cottonwood trees at the same time.

TO CATCH A BIRD

        Sparrow, Sparrow,
        You’re so pretty
        Don’t you fly away.

The Barnes family’s closest neighbors, Hank and Beulah Painter, lived in a tiny unpainted house up a narrow one-car lane one half mile to the west. Every day Beulah and some of her children would go bouncing by on their way to town in their black Model-T Ford, top down in summer, making loud sputtering noises, followed by a cloud of slowly settling dust. Often she stopped by for a chat with Jenny’s Mother, Mae. Jenny liked this as Beulah, a large red haired woman, had a ready hearty laugh, liked to joke, and would usually have some colorful bit of news to tell them. Once, when Jenny was creeping carefully around under the big cedar trees in the front yard, Beulah stopped her car in the road for a minute.

“What do you think you’re doing, Jennifer Jane?”

“I’m tryin’ to catch a bird,” Jenny told her, pointing to a flock of sparrows, pecking away at the ground under the cedars.

“What you need is a little salt to put on its tail,” Beulah laughed, and drove on to town.

Jenny eagerly ran to the kitchen, where Mother was baking bread, saying breathlessly, “I need the salt shaker.”

“What for?”

“To catch a bird. If I put salt on its tail, I can catch one. Beulah said so.”

Mother laughed, “If you can get closed enough to put salt on a bird’s tail, I suppose you could catch one. But when they see you getting too close, they always fly away. The part about the salt is just an old joke.”

Jenny felt disappointed and a little foolish. She should have known better.

TOADY

This was a wonderful special time, the time in her life when Mother called her Toady. Jenny was too young to wonder what it meant, or to consider why Mother had chosen such a term of endearment. As she grew older, she would be embarrassed if anyone called her by her old nickname. But Jenny was only two, and yet to be disturbed by feelings of personal vanity.

Jenny toddled about, not very gracefully, on her short legs, taking tiny bumpy steps, which were something like hops. In a sweetly impulsive mood, Mother would sometimes look at this sweet lump of a child and lovingly call her Toady. At such a time Jenny felt that life was complete; she was secure, content and surrounded by happiness. It was quite enough to bask in the warmth of being loved.